There is an alternative: A unilateral peace plan

The United States Administration, the European Union and various individual EU countries all agree that Israel should be induced or compelled to end the “occupation” and retreat unconditionally to the 1949 Armistice line, which they insist on calling “the June 4, 1967 borders.” No one even says any more that peace would result from it. No one even pretends to believe that any more. Not many people are that stupid.

Even before the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers last June and the missile barrage that followed, the leadership camp of the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians,” the ones the world insists are “moderates,” sabotaged implementation of yet another variation on Oslo by entering a unity agreement with Hamas. The whole Oslo process is annulled, notwithstanding any whitewash by President Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry. This recent posting on the Fatah website should dispel any notion that they are truly moderates by any reasonable definition of the word. Just imagine the Israeli government had posted it with respect to mass slaughter of Arabs. Would anyone consider it consistent with moderation?

Any plan for the future has to be based on facts, on reality, whether it is a peace plan or a diplomatic stratagem to hold the world at bay while our enemies crumble or whatever else. We see what going along with the world has gotten us and we can see that it will take us deeper and deeper into existential danger. The facts are that any concession to the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” will be used to kill Jews and destroy Israel, as has been consistent past experience. It is no coincidence that the first “intifada” followed within two years the Abu Nidal exchange of 1150 terrorists for 3 Israelis. Every capitulation has made our situation worse and stimulated more and bigger demands; death by a thousand cuts.

And at every juncture, we were told “there is no alternative.” This is tantamount to saying that there is no alternative to suicide. We have heard for 20 years “what is the alternative”? That’s an answer thinly disguised as a question. As a question, it is easy to answer. Had we done nothing in 1992 and refused to go to Madrid, done nothing about Oslo in 1993 or, even better, had we prosecuted Yossi Beilin & Co. for negotiating with the enemy illegally as private citizens and had we then continued to do nothing, we would be far better off today.

Comes the usual question: do we want to rule over another people? No, we do not, but we are presented, not with an abstract proposition but with a choice between alternatives: would we prefer to rule over another people or give them the very real possibility of annihilating us, as they have declared many times and amply demonstrated is their fondest wish? “Peace or Apartheid” is either psychotic delusion or psychopathic deception. The Arabs do not intend anything like peace but its diametric opposite.

Israel has incessantly tried courting peace with the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians,” making one painful concession after another, and one one-sided gesture after another, only to be made a fool of again and again. Negotiations, confidence building measures, painful concessions, security fence, proportionate response, and international guarantees are not just useless, but make Israel the laughing stock of all countries. Every algorithm that required reciprocity from the “Palestinians” failed. There is no choice but to find a viable alternative, certainly not a rehash of the same approach that has wrought disaster for decades.

Furthermore, there is no point in Israel making any agreement with anyone because only Israel is bound by them. And not only agreements, but Israel is bound even to things the Arabs demand which were never agreed to, such as suspension of Jewish construction over the 1949 Armistice Line. Moreover, Israel is bound to every offer Israel ever made, even if rejected, conditions be damned. Bill Clinton has reminded us in this regard, that Israel (in the person of Ehud Barak, who was then Prime Minister) once offered the Temple Mount to the Arabs, so “what’s the big deal?” Once offered, Israel is committed to it forever. An Israeli offer becomes an Israeli commitment, a unilateral one with no quid pro quo.

Yet, no one else is expected to keep any part of an agreement with Israel. Which paragraph of the Oslo or Wye agreements have the “Palestinians” kept? Even the provision that the PLO will take control of the territories handed over by Israel they have not carried out. They shared power with Hamas from the beginning and then got ousted from Gaza in a coup d’etat. They agreed to teach peace in their schools and to eliminate anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. Instead, they teach jihad in their schools and over their media, extol and glorify terrorists and teach hatred of Jews and Israel and the imperative to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Only Israel views that as a breach of their agreement to teach peace in their schools and to eliminate anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. No one else cares.

The same has been true of the 1967 cease fire agreement with Egypt. The world demands that Israel keep to every letter of the agreement but never expected Egypt to keep any of it. Immediately upon Israeli surrender of territory, Egypt brought up anti-aircraft batteries prohibited by the cease fire agreement but the US ignored Israel’s complaints. They were the first step in the preparation for the Yom Kippur attack. Ho-hum.

So, it is clear that Israel has nothing to gain from an agreement but only to have its own hands tied. Whatever Israel does she must do unilaterally. Israel cannot, however, unilaterally withdraw from Judea and Samaria or any part of them and expect anything good to come of it. That would be simply preemptive surrender. Martin Sherman has disposed of that idea very definitively. (See http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Into-the-Fray-A-public-challenge-to-Michael-Oren-339234.)

He has similarly disposed of the solution proposed by Caroline Glick, whom he and I both admire and respect. (See http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-fray-To-my-colleague-Caroline-a-caveat-347503) In brief, Glick proposes that Israel annex Judea and Samaria and extend to the Arab inhabitants permanent residence and the possibility of citizenship. To annex Judea and Samaria and extend citizenship to the hostile Arab inhabitants would make Israel ungovernable and untenable. As Sherman has explained, it would cause Israel to cease to exist, not only as a democracy, but as a society. In fact, it would turn Israel into an army with a country attached. Seeing that they could bring down Israeli society would stoke the perception that they can destroy Israel with the ”P-Bomb”, meaning population increase, and their birth rate would soar again to 10 children per woman.

It is clear, however, that the “peace process” cannot lead to peace, nor was it ever meant to. Anyone who needs proof of that need only read the charters of the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah. Western leaders don’t give a damn about the Arabs’ true intentions, which they certainly know about. The “peace process” is not about peace at all, except by Arafat’s definition of “peace,” meaning the destruction of Israel. The Road Map does not show the final destination. The road ends at New Auschwitz. “Peace process” is today’s exact counterpart of “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

So Israel has no alternative to unilateral action. Ostensibly, the Palestinian Authority was created to establish peace with Israel but has no intention of doing so. Its manifest intentions are to use every concession made by Israel to improve its ability to wage war against Israel and kill Israelis. Nothing positive can come of dealings with it. Israelis of every political stripe overwhelmingly want separation from the Arabs but the Arabs refuse to share the land with Israel. Hamas explicitly refuses to share the planet with Jews altogether. They insist on a zero-sum outcome. They insist on Israel’s destruction and the annihilation of the Jews.

The two-state advocates’ policy would make Israel untenable geographically in order to preserve its democratic character. The one-state advocates’ plan would make Israel untenable demographically in order to preserve its defensibility. The choice is between annihilation and what the anti-Israel “left” call “apartheid.” The alternatives are few and unattractive.

The purpose of the “peace process” is dismemberment and demoralization of Israel preparatory to a final Arab onslaught to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews. One has to suppose that this is the reason that John Kerry asserts so definitively that there is no alternative to the two-state solution. Nothing else can move Israel onward toward its own destruction.

We have a choice between annihilation and ruling over another people. What should Israel do?

I propose a unilateral plan by which Israel can stabilize the situation and assure its own future. Israel must reenter and annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza, take down the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, destroy all the terrorist organizations, including the PLO, retake control of the Temple Mount and close it to Muslim use, which constitutes a continuing humiliation of Israel and signals the superiority of Islam and its mastery over the Jews. Parallel to this, the Israeli government must generously subsidize Arabs to emigrate, as Sherman has also advocated, help them to find other countries to go to and stand ready to purchase their property and businesses if they have no other buyers.

All this needs to be done in order to make it clear that there will never again be any authority in this land other than the State of Israel and that the hostile Arab population will never become citizens. The diplomatic and media mugging that Israel will suffer will not be greater than for annexing a part, which would imply that the territories are not rightfully ours.

Then Israel should announce that the Arabs can have peace right where they stand. Don’t attack us again and we won’t take any more land from you, but if Israel has to enter Arab countries to defend against attack or to root out terrorist activity against Israel, Israel will never leave those territories. They will be annexed to Israel. It is all Eretz Yisrael anyway but we are content to wait for the Messiah to give it to us.  In the meantime, you may live there in peace and security, wealth and freedom, but only if you live at peace with us. You need not recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people nor declare an end of the conflict nor relinquish the “right” of return. Don’t declare anything. Just don’t attack us again and peace will reign.

Once it is clear that Israel will not be destroyed, many will leave for the chance to live a normal, wholesome life somewhere else. They will not stay, even if the oil sheikhs outbid Israel to induce them to stay. No amount of the oil sheikhs’ money can buy them a life free of the madness that they have created by their obsessive drive to destroy Israel.

And do not ever again tell us there is no alternative to the “two-state solution.” Israelis saw clearly last summer that a “Palestinian” state is a recipe for New Auschwitz. Nothing that Israel’s enemies can threaten us with can be even nearly as bad as the “solution” we are offered by Israel’s “friends.”